Last Vegas (2013) * *

Directed by:  Jon Turtletaub


Starring:  Michael Douglas, Robert DeNiro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Jerry Ferrara

Last Vegas has four Oscar-winning actors (five if you count Mary Steenburgen) together onscreen for the first time.    They seem to be having fun, although it's tough to tell with DeNiro, who these days has a permanent look of someone who just smelled a dirty diaper.   But the movie is slight.    It has a few laughs, generated mostly from the good nature and timing of the actors, but overall it's rather thin soup.  

Thin soup is fine for comedies if they are funny.    Last Vegas has some intermittent chuckles, but nothing truly memorable.     Naturally, there are jokes about age, Viagra, and sex, which are to be expected.    Most of them are routine.   Most of the film is routine and uninspired, although the actors try their best to elevate it.

Because many of these actors have built-in personas, their characters are painted in broad strokes.    Douglas plays Billy, the gray-haired, tanned millionaire with charm and a million-dollar smile.    Think of Gordon Gekko moving to Malibu and you have Billy.     DeNiro is Paddy, a lonely widower who sits in his apartment all day mourning his dead spouse.     I've already discussed his countenance.   Freeman is Archie, who recently had a stroke and is treated like a child by his overprotective son.    He is wise and learned about the world, much like Freeman in nearly all of his roles.    Kline is Sam, who lives in Florida and has lost his zeal for sex with his wife.     She gives him a condom and Viagra pill at the airport and gives him permission to cheat.    Any bets on whether the pill and condom go unused?    At least Sam doesn't act like an older version of Otto from A Fish Called Wanda.   Then again, maybe that wouldn't have been a bad thing.

The plot involves the four guys, best friends since they were kids in Brooklyn, getting together to throw Billy a bachelor party.    He is marrying a hottie about 30 years his junior.    There are subplots, including Billy and Paddy's falling out because Billy didn't attend Paddy's wife's funeral.    There is also history with Paddy's wife and Billy from long ago which is explained and re-explained, with a little more truth added each time so we get the complete picture by movie's end.    Billy and Paddy also seem to be both be falling for a Vegas nightclub singer (Steenburgen), which means history may repeat itself.   

There is also a curious subplot involving a young wiseass (Ferrara), who at first picks on the old guys, but then through a silly plot development winds up waiting on them hand and foot.     The Ferrara character is so unnecessary that I'm not sure he is even given a name, but he has at least lost a lot of weight from his days as Turtle on Entourage.      There are also a few scenes in which the old guys show the young whippersnappers a thing or two about partying and dancing.    

I wanted to like Last Vegas.    The actors are all accomplished veterans whom we have an instant familiarity with, but it's lacking that certain something which makes a comedy special.     I have to believe, however, that Morgan Freeman must've been happy to at least not be narrating the thing.